Proactive Disclosure Lags in US, Archive Audit Finds

Only 40 percent of US government agencies systematically post online the records released through Freedom of Information Act requests, according to an audit done by the National Security Archive.

The Archive team audited 165 federal agencies and found only 67 with online libraries populated with significant numbers of released FOIA documents and regularly updated.

Proactive release is mandated by the law, the Archive said, and agencies doing it have“saved those agencies huge amounts of processing time for FOIA requests that instead were satisfied by just looking online.”

“This Audit has found seventeen E-Star agencies that have embraced Congress’s vision and are thriving,” the Archive reported. “But we also found many who continue to bury their documents in an analog hole.”

It said, “Thirty agencies have adopted just the bare minimum of Congress’s instruction to become digital; thirty-three agencies have not even done that.”